Month: June 2007

Georgetown, South Carolina, 4.25 pm.

For a freshly updated, interactive gallery of Dish readers’ window views across the world, click here.

Fareed Zakaria makes an important point about the advantages we actually have in countering Islamist fundamentalism:

The split between Sunnis and Shiites—which plays a role in Lebanon as well—is only one of the divisions within the world of Islam. Within that universe are Shiites and Sunnis, Persians and Arabs, Southeast Asians and Middle Easterners and, importantly, moderates and radicals. The clash between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian territories is the most vivid sign of the latter divide. Just as the diversity within the communist world ultimately made it less threatening, so the many varieties of Islam weaken its ability to coalesce into a single, monolithic foe. It would be even less dangerous if Western leaders recognized this and worked to emphasize such distinctions. Rather than speaking of a single worldwide movement—which absurdly lumps together Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India, Shiite warlords in Lebanon and Sunni jihadists in Egypt—we should be emphasizing that all these groups are distinct, with differing agendas, enemies and friends. That robs them of their claim to represent Islam. It describes them as they often are—small local gangs of misfits, hoping to attract attention through nihilism and barbarism.

And yet Romney and Giuliani spend their entire time conflating all these different entities for domestic rhetorical purposes. We really cannot afford such foreign policy stupidity in the White House. Eight years is enough.

From the annals of liberal busy-body hell: what you can and cannot say when trying to rent or sell an apartment in New York City.

A reader writes:

Ordinarily I might be inclined to agree that the soft power of the poodle (the toy variety, of course) could give one pause to wonder, "Who is walking whom?"  But that suggests that Bush is the one at the business end of the leash.  The only tether that really matters in Washington for the next 16 1/2 months is the one Dick Cheney feeds out just far enough to keep himself from accounting for actions done in the name of his own poodle.  In fact, this is more like the kind of child-leash that parents use to give their offspring the illusion of independent action.  The Blair-Poodle is merely an enhancement of the illusion.

Condi Rice says it again. Jeff Weintraub notices.

Michael Ledeen quotes a famous general complaining that

we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers!

I think it’s Michael’s attempt to persuade people that what the media is reporting – the failure of the surge in Iraq – is to be ignored in favor of generals who know how to win the war. Except the quote is from Robert E. Lee. D’oh!

A reader writes:

I don’t even know where to start with your "Dissent of the Day". I’m sure they would dismiss me as "tone-deaf" on Hillary too, but objectively, I can’t grasp what is so special about an ex-president’s wife running for president. I would also love to see a woman president, but not one that owes her prominence to her man. And that is the bottom line with Hillary – without the exposure she got as First Lady, she would not be a Senator or a serious contender to the presidency.  Sorry – it is your "dissenter" that is tone-deaf … and apparently blind.

Hillary Clinton had a chance to pioneer feminism. But she preferred her own ambition to her alleged principles, and when it really came down to it, she deferred to a man. Bill came first, however brutally he humiliated and used her. But she knew her place – and coped by trying to leverage it for more power. A profile in feminist courage she has never been. Too risky. When it comes to feminist pioneering, she’s less Margaret Thatcher than Cory Aquino.

His dedication to using the executive branch (which, natch, he isn’t in) to create a roving extra-legal wing of government, able to detain individuals indefinitely, and torture them, is well-documented. But I didn’t know he essentially spied on and intercepted White House staff to prevent the president getting alternative views:

At the White House, [White House national security lawyer John] Bellinger sent Rice a blunt — and, he thought, private — legal warning. The Cheney-Rumsfeld position would place the president indisputably in breach of international law and would undermine cooperation from allied governments…

One lawyer in his office said that Bellinger was chagrined to learn, indirectly, that Cheney had read the confidential memo and "was concerned" about his advice. Thus Bellinger discovered an unannounced standing order: Documents prepared for the national security adviser, another White House official said, were "routed outside the formal process" to Cheney, too. The reverse did not apply.

Powell asked for a meeting with Bush. The same day, Jan. 25, 2002, Cheney’s office struck a preemptive blow. It appeared to come from Gonzales, a longtime Bush confidant whom the president nicknamed "Fredo." Hours after Powell made his request, Gonzales signed his name to a memo that anticipated and undermined the State Department’s talking points. The true author has long been a subject of speculation, for reasons including its unorthodox format and a subtly mocking tone that is not a Gonzales hallmark.

A White House lawyer with direct knowledge said Cheney’s lawyer, Addington, wrote the memo. Flanigan passed it to Gonzales, and Gonzales sent it as "my judgment" to Bush. If Bush consulted Cheney after that, the vice president became a sounding board for advice he originated himself.

What a total tool Gonzales is. How mortifying to be revealed as someone who, under the guise of Office of Legal Counsel, is just a device for David Addington’s ventriloquism.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

There’s an art to it. A real life guide from Japanese television about watching the O’Reilly Factor, and how to avoid the worst consequences: